What’s on TV Saturday: ‘Blue Planet II’ and ‘False Flag’

Sir David Attenborough returns to host “Blue Planet II,” and average citizens are thrust into an international incident in “False Flag.”

What’s on TV

PLANET EARTH: BLUE PLANET II 9 p.m. on BBC America. “Never has there been a more crucial time to reveal what is going on beneath the surface of the seas,” Sir David Attenborough says in the introduction of this sequel to the blockbuster nature series “The Blue Planet.” It arms itself with a more direct appeal for conservation than its predecessor did, but it’s still mostly observational — and what a spectacle to observe! Dolphins, giant turtles and coral reefs are all captured in impossibly clear shots. Despite the high production values, there’s a sense of primal delight, evident in an early scene featuring a pod of dolphins as they ride the waves in the Red Sea. “They surf,” says Mr. Attenborough, “And, as far as we can tell, they do so for the sheer joy of it.”

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE 11:30 p.m. on NBC. Jessica Chastain, who recently starred in “Molly’s Game,” will host “S.N.L.” for the first time. The Australian singer-songwriter Troye Sivan (whom The New York Times’s Jon Caramanica called “an easeful polymath who manages to make big moments feel intimate”) is the musical guest.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2010) 11 p.m. on TNT. The fable of a Harvard underclassman taking some equations written on his dorm window, drinking a few beers and spawning a world-altering social network is by now a well-known origin tale. And the Winklevoss twins, whose lawsuit against the Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg over the creation of the social media platform helps provide the narrative backbone of this film, have moved on to Bitcoin trading. But given that the scope of Facebook’s influence is the topic of more discussion than ever, it’s a particularly interesting time to revisit this fictionalized version of the social network’s story, directed by David Fincher. Jesse Eisenberg was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Mr. Zuckerburg, Armie Hammer plays both Winklevoss twins and Andrew Garfield portrays the other Facebook co-founder, Eduardo Saverin. In her review for The Times, Manohla Dargis called the film “a resonant contemporary story about the new power elite and an older, familiar narrative of ambition, except instead of discovering his authentic self, Mark builds a database, turning his life — and ours — into zeros and ones, which is what makes it also a story about the human soul.”

What’s Streaming

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Magi Azarzar in Episode 4 of “False Flag.”Credit
Keshet/Hulu

FALSE FLAGon Hulu. A preschool teacher, a chemist and a bride walk into a motel room and kidnap an Iranian government minister. Or do they? This Israeli series is loosely based on the 2010 assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas official who was murdered by a team of killers who used fake passports. It follows five people whose identities were on the passports connected to an international incident, and who then get thrust into it. In his review for The Times, Mike Hale wrote that it’s “the kind of solid psychological action thriller that Israeli TV regularly provides.”